Vol. 5 Issue 9 Newsletter of The Southern Land Rover Society, Inc. Oct 2001

Jeff Berry performs some maintenance under the hood of a carnivorous Series truck at the 2001 SAE event Photo by Bill Powell

Southern Appalachian Expedition – 2001, Menlo, Georgia This year’s SAE event was the biggest and best yet for this annual fall gathering of the SOLAROS club members and their guests. This year Norman Barden, Scott Copeland and BJ Montgomery relocated the event to the northwest corner of Georgia near the town of Menlo. This area is very pretty and surprisingly not well known by even long time Georgia residents. The main body of the event was situated along the eastern edge of the ridgeline formed by Lookout Mountain, which stretches from Chattanooga to Gadsden, Alabama. They arranged to have the event spread out over several pieces of private property with camping at one site and trails of varying difficulty at three other properties around the area. This area also features some spectacular parks including Cloudland Canyon, Little River Canyon and Desoto Falls as well as Lookout Mountain Park and Rock City. Over 150 Land Rovers attended the meet and several hundred enthusiasts from all over the country were soon seen pitch-

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Upcoming Land Rover Event Schedule October 17—club meeting at Tony’s October 20—impromptu trail ride - TBD Nov 17—Rich Mt cleanup ride—meet at McDonald’s in East Ellijay (Hwy 515) at 10:00 AM Dec 19—club meeting at Tony’s Christmas holiday ride—TBD May 18, 2002—British Motor Car Day at Chateau Élan

Club News Solaros was featured on page 146 of the October 2001 issue of the English magazine Land Rover Enthusiast in a one page article complete with pictures of Scott Bowden, Blake Naugel, Mark Boomershine, Steve Herrod and a crowd shot of our group at Chateau Élan along with a shot of the world famous Solaros emblem. Remember—if you haven’t re-enlisted your dues for the 2001-2002 year are now past due. Please send your $40 to Libby Gallagher to continue your membership in Solaros for another year. The club is planning a clean-up ride for the Rich Mountain trail on Saturday, November 17th. We will be picking up trash starting on the quarry side of the mountain and we will try to connect with the work we did on the back side of the mountain last spring. Bring gloves, trash bags and hiking boots and meet at the McDonald’s in East Ellijay (Hwy 515) at 10:00AM. If you’re late just come on in to the front side of the trail and you’ll easily catch up. If it’s raining we’ll have to cancel as the trail gets too slick for safety. Check with Chris Schramm or Erik Van Dyck for details. The Walter’s have added another Land Rover to their fleet— this one’s a red 1989 Range Rover with only 71,000 miles on it. This one is slated for Christy to drive—so she has said that I am not to even think about messing up HER car (in other words the running boards stay on it!) Many Thanks to Bill Powell for providing his photographic skills for many of the photos you see in this newsletter. His contributions are very much appreciated by the entire Solaros membership.

Message from the SAE Event Chairman I would like to thank everyone who attended the 8th an-nual SAE. I was very pleased with the turnout and hope everyone had a good time. I would like to take a mo-ment to give a special thanks to the following: Scott Copeland, BJ Montgomery, and Heath, they all helped whenever I needed it without question. I would also like to thank the land owners: Albert Palmer, Steve Duncan, and Mike Larkin, they were very generous with the use of their land and were a big help with planning the trails and such. As for the 9th annual SAE, we are beginning to work on the plans for it now. For the past two years I have tried to build the SAE into one of the country's best Land Rover events, and I think that we are definitely on the right track. Stay tuned for updates throughout the year for next year's event. Also, according to Kevin Girling, NA editor for Land Rover Enthusiast magazine, there is a full page article on SOLAROS and the SAE event. Myself and Jack Walter sent Kevin some info earlier this summer, and apparently it has been published. So for those interested in seeing our club and the SAE event in a magazine, pick up a copy of the October issue of Land Rover Enthusiast. Thanks, and see everyone soon, Norman Barden

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ing tents and setting up camp all over the two large fields that comprised home base for the weekend (except for a few less hardy souls that elected o set up camp in a motel in nearby Summerville). The registration tent was set up in front of a spectacular restored dogtrot log cabin belonging to our host Albert Palmer and another tent was setup to pro-vide shelter for the Saturday dinner. As new arrivals trick-led in throughout Friday afternoon David Russell was there to get them logged in, harass them a bit and sell them Sola-ros hats. Norman and Scott had arranged for three separate areas for trail rides. The most spectacular site was Mike Larkin’s

place, just down the road where he has 47 acres along the edge of the ridgeline. A log cabin only a few feet from a 800 foot drop anchors this beautiful setting and Mike has spent many hours carving an off road course through the woods and over the rock formations in the property sur-rounding the cabin. The course had a little bit of every-thing, mud, steep hills, big rocks, and even bigger rocks. There were plenty of opportunities to get cross axled, stuck or high centered as several Rover owners found out almost immediately. This place proved to be one of the most popu-lar sites of the weekend as Land Rovers could be spotted plying the trail well into the night. Mike was a very gra-cious host and enjoyed seeing the Land Rovers tracking around his course. One trail – dubbed the “Scenic Trail” featured a tricky little rock garden right on the edge of the cliff with two routes around a big rock set right in the mid-dle of the trail. The left route was almost impossible for a longer wheelbase vehicle to maneuver around before meet-ing up with a large rock formation that towered over the tallest Land Rover. The other way sent you up and over a large rock that was nearly impossible without relying heav-ily on the protection of rocksliders (one of the first modifi-

cations that should be done to a Range Rover or Discov-ery).

Another site, Steve Duncan’s place was supposed to offer some extreme trails – I didn’t get there so I can’t offer any reviews on that system – but the third site; “Dirt Cel-lar” offered a variety of trails from mild to wild in an area just south of the town of Menlo. One trail - rated moder-ate – offered some interesting climbs as the trail wound its way up a ridgeline. Once on top of the ridge an easy trail peeled off to the right and offered a scenic loop through the woods while more challenging terrain awaited ahead. An extreme trail that followed a spectacu-lar fault line in the limestone cap wound up to the left of the main trail. The climb up out of this crack in the earth was where Booger came to grief on a failed attempt to scrabble up a near vertical ten foot slope. Steve and Laura Dempsey were unwilling participants in the “Wheels at the Sky Club” as Booger rolled twice. Luckily Steve’s roll bar prevented any serious injury but they were both sore the next day. The top, windshield, power steering

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hose and battery were toast although after removing the really bent stuff and reinflating the left front tire they were able to drive Booger back to camp the next morning. Other trails in this area featured tight little technical sections that wound through the trees causing some of the novices some anxious moments as quarter panels got uncomfortably close to the forest. Other Land Rover owners seemed to enjoy this site as well – I only got to explore about half of the available trails on this trip. Saturday afternoon we decided to lead a novice ride down to the Upper Little River Canyon where there are a couple of river crossings and a series of easy dirt trails that ended up at a rocky outcropping overlooking the river. We had 28 Land Rovers forming a convoy as we wound through the approach to the canyon and that was way too many for one group – next year we’ll plan to schedule more of these nov-ice rides at different times throughout the day. After exiting the dirt roads we stopped at an overlook where we could view the Little River Falls and look down into the upper reaches of the canyon proper. After this stop we split into two groups with the majority heading back to camp and a

small group of us electing to continue on along the canyon rim road. I had read about this route on a sports car web-site and wanted to take a look at the drive as it was sup-posed to be spectacular. Frequent overlooks and beautiful vistas across a narrow, rocky gorge welcomed us around every turn of this twisty drive along the western edge of the canyon. At one stop we noticed a formation of cicada shells lined up as if for review on a picnic table – and it looked like some sort of alien invasion force planning their next move. We had to explain cicadas to a Japanese couple that was along for the drive. The final grade down the canyon wall to the mouth of the canyon was an eye opener – we almost had to use low range to descend it! Those of us who took this side trip highly recommend that SAE participants take the time to see this spectacular can-yon for your self next year.

Back at camp as the dinner was being prepared we ex-plored the limits of suspension travel on a 20-degree ramp supplied by Four Wheel Drive Parts Center. David Rus-sell’s 1971 SIIA ramped an astounding 720 RTI (very good for a leaf sprung Land Rover) but Adam Lyon ruled the roost with an RTI of 1050 in his much-modified Dis-covery. After dinner the raffle and auction (lots of really good stuff – including a set of the new BFG Mud Terrains) raised well over $4,000 for the American Red Cross from the generous contributions of the event sponsors and the SAE participants. We would like to thank all of the participants, the spon-sors, our hosts in Menlo; Albert Palmer, Mike Larkin and Steve Duncan, and especially Norman, BJ and Scott for their efforts to bring this event to the level it has achieved in the past few years. We look forward to next years’ event and want to invite you all back for the 9th Annual Southern Appalachian Expedition.

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ROAV Mid Atlantic Rally 2001—Jack Walter This year’s Mid-Atlantic Rally in Arvonia, Virginia was a re-sounding success and once again those of us who made the nine-hour drive to middle-of-nowhere Virginia were glad we made the trip. This year’s event had over 207 vehicles registered and an examination of the entries would show that close to half of these were Series vehicles – and there were some VERY nice examples among the crowd along with any number of modified Range Rovers, Defenders and Discoverys. Coming to this event is a great way to see what other Land Rover owners are doing to their trucks and to get some great ideas. A number of vendors

are always there to display the latest Rover Goodies and Land Rover of North America and Land Rover Richmond throw a lot of support to the event. Combine all this with good weather (how do these guys get so lucky?), good food, great company and a beautiful setting and this is one nice event. Among the SOLAROS attendees were (and I apologize if I miss anyone) David & Amy Porter, Chris & Camille Brown, Todd & Liz Miller, Steve & Alice Herrod, Byron & Michelle Knight, William and Bill Roeder, Lise Barnett, Trevor Bryson, Chris Schramm, Moshe Shemtov, Ron & Rick Ward (be sure to read their story later), Jack Walter, and Bill Powell. Our trip up on Friday was uneventful as I convoyed up with Steve and Alice after we picked up Bill Powell near his home in Hartwell. Bill was expressing doubts about this whole camping out concept, as the last time he slept under canvas was when he was 14 some 46 years ago. His remembrances of camping out involved leaky pup tents with no floors and eating things cold right out of the can – obviously not the way that SOLAROS members do things these days (it’s amazing how much stuff we pack along just for two days sometimes!!). I reassured him that it would be ok; we’d take good care of him. For good measure I had tossed in an extra tent and air mattress and Steve had con-tributed a folding cot. Little did we know how this would all turn out!

We made good time after departing Atlanta about 5:15AM and I used my new CD player to introduce Bill to the Grateful Dead, Lorena McKinnett, and other musical delights as we drove into Virginia. We were just looking for a likely spot to have lunch as we approached Lynchburg when Bill spotted a familiar looking Series truck on a trailer in front of a truck stop. Recognizing Rick Ward’s SIIA but confused as to why it was apparently abandoned we turned around to see if we could help. The people at the truck stop grudgingly told us that they were off getting their other truck fixed (see their story) but they wouldn’t or couldn’t supply any details and we decided to have lunch with Rick’s truck in case they returned soon. After the meal and with no sign of the Wards; we drove the rest of the way to the event. We did pass through a State Patrol checkpoint just before Buck-ingham where they were stopping everyone for a license check. Upon our arrival we checked in and spotted the Porter’s D110 at the center of the SOLAROS encampment. We showed Bill how to set up a tent and he seemed impressed at the amount of gear that we dragged out – folding tables, chairs, stoves, water jugs, coolers, air mattresses, even cots! Todd Miller gave me some good natured ribbing when I tied a Bear Valley Land Rovers banner across my tent and we watched Steve Herrod set up his elaborate double bed and air mattress in his nylon palace. After setting up camp and wandering around for a bit including a quick tour of the island we returned to cook dinner. A steak with fried rice and corn on the cob seemed to hit the spot and Bill said maybe this camping out wasn’t going to be so bad after all. He still wasn’t too sure about this sleeping in a tent bit though. After dinner we went over to the registration tent to help out a little and Bill asked about the owner of the 450-acre property that we were encamped on. The ROAV representative said it belonged to a man named Adamson and Bill asked, “it’s not Castle Adamson is it – I know him!” As it turns out Bill and Castle knew each other through the Morgan club and Castle’s daughter, Louise had been a frequent guest in Bill’s house when she was attending Mercer College. Bill went down to the re-stored farmhouse overlooking the pond which the Adamson’s use as a summer getaway to say hello to his old friend. He came back up the hill a half hour later with a sheepish grin and asked if we would be very upset with him if he told us he had been invited to bunk in the upper floor of the farmhouse for the week-end. Not only did Bill Powell score a warm, bed under a roof but with it hot showers and the use of a 109” Land Rover for the weekend! And he had no idea until several hours after we ar-rived that he knew the owners. Bill is worried that we’ll all poke fun at him for avoiding the “camping out” experience – we wouldn’t do that would we guys? The next day I had planned to enter the RTV trial but I got to thinking about how much fun (HA!) that it might be to try the whole Aluminum Man Triathlon this year – especially after I heard that they weren’t doing the Hi-Lift winching trial this year (that event can burst your heart!). So I needed a partner in crime – one I could talk into doing crazy stuff – so I immedi-ately thought of Chris Brown. Be sure to read the article describ-ing our adventures. Chris says he remembers parts of it differ-

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ently but – he’s not the one that got dumped in the pond by his teammate! He was also disappointed that more of the SOLA-ROS crew wasn’t around to cheer us on as we struggled to achieve glory and provide comic relief to the crowds.

Before dinner the teeter-totter competition was started and I was goading Steve Herrod saying I was going to beat him (since I lucked out last year with a 13 second time) – well I must have gotten him worked up because he balanced his Range Rover perfectly in 18 seconds, beating my time by two seconds. There was another truck behind us that did it in 10 seconds however, easily eclipsing both our times. We don’t know how we finally finished in this event yet because it was to continue on Sunday afternoon. After a strenuous day we relaxed to dinner and a show from a local African dance troupe (interesting but a little strange – some of the kids were very good though) before getting down to the raffle and auction. Camille won a set of Defender door tops in the raffle and Amy Porter won a set of D-90 fender top protectors while the rest of us bid for various items as they came up for auction. At one point Camille, Chris Schramm and Bill Powell were all bidding against each other for some Series II Discovery part when Camille told Schramm to shut up and sit down – the crowd loved it!

That night it got pretty cold – there was a good hard frost on the tents when we awoke. Chris Schramm’s air mattress had self-deflated on Friday night so he had taken advantage of Bill’s good fortune and absconded with the cot and air mattress that we had reserved for our delinquent camper. When Bill showed up as we struck camp, fresh from a warm bunk and a hot shower Amy warned him that he had best just keep quiet about his “camping” arrangements. Speaking of camping arrangements; there was a beautifully restored 1968 Airstream 17’ trailer at the event this year that epitomized the way to experience luxury camping – many of us were jealous of that extremely nice rig on this morn-ing! At breakfast they were having a contest for best hard luck story so I twisted Rick Ward’s arm into telling his tale one more time – and he won a T-shirt for his efforts (We drove to Virginia, bought bad gas, and all we brought back was a lousy T-shirt?) After one more pass by the vendors – the ARB Roof Racks are particularly nice and RoverTym’s new Range Rover Classic rear bumper was sweet – we loaded up and headed back to Atlanta. Other than a very heavy concentration of State Patrol cruisers in South Carolina the trip back was largely uneventful. We listened to the radio reports of the bombing in Afghanistan and tried to make sure we were south of Charlotte before the Nascar race was The most classic campsite at MAR 2001

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over. A truck accident at Jefferson forced us off the expressway through Gainesville and delayed our arrival home by an hour and a half. We want to thank all of the ROAV members who worked so hard to put on this event as well as our host for the weekend, Castle Adamson and his family who have graciously opened their prop-erty to this event for the last three years. This year was especially difficult for everyone involved as the ROAV President; Stuart Moore was seriously injured in an accident the weekend before the event when a tree limb fell as they were clearing trails on the site, striking him on the head and fracturing his skull. The good news that we received late Sunday morning was that he was doing very well and would possibly be released from the hospital on Tuesday. Stuart was up and walking around the hospital by the time we left Virginia even though he is missing a couple of square inches of his skull and came very close to dying as result of his injury. We hope to see him back and enjoying the event that he worked so hard to present next year. Thank you all at ROAV and we’ll be back again next year.

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Team Solaros in The Aluminum Man Competi-tion – MAR 2001 by Jack Walter – Solaros members Jack Walter and Chris Brown decided to par-ticipate in this year’s Aluminum Man Triathlon at the Mid Atlan-tic Rally in Virginia. Here is our account of how the event looks from a competitor’s standpoint. The Aluminum Man Triathlon is a competition that is sponsored by ROAV, the club that puts on the annual Mid Atlantic Rally in Arvonia, Virginia. Some fairly good prizes are awarded to the competitors in the event plus it is a lot of fun for both competitors and spectators. The event has three vehicle related portions plus a parts identification section that can be diabolically difficult. The first task was a pioneering task that involved removing a tire from your truck (using standard Land Rover jacks and tools), run-ning the wheel down a steep slope to a beach on the edge of the pond, loading the tire into a canoe, paddling up around a buoy anchored in the far end of the pond (after properly donning a life jacket from a circle inscribed on the beach), returning to the beach and carrying the tire back up the slope to reinstall it on your Land Rover. The time is stopped when you return the jack to its place in the back of your truck. It sounds simple but there are numerous opportunities to have time penalties assessed for such things as not properly fastening your life jacket or using unsafe jacking procedures. And then there’s always those self induced penalties that Team Solaros found a way to include in their per-formance – at least we provided good solid comic relief for the crowd. Land Rovers were lined up four at a time for this first event with my 91 Range Rover at the far end. At the command to start we quickly grabbed the jack, chocks and lug wrench out of the back of the Rover and went to work. Everything went real well for about the first 30 seconds as I chocked the right front wheel and then ran around to start loosening the lugs on the left rear wheel. Chris was up under the back of the Rover placing the hydraulic bottle jack under the rear axle and trying to lift the wheel clear of the ground. As I spun the next to last lug nut off the stud I heard Chris say “the jack’s not working right” and I had to stop to see what the problem was. Apparently my Rover jack works a little differently than the one in Chris’ Disco as the center column of the jack rises first as you pump the handle then the outer column comes up and lifts the vehicle. Chris didn’t think this looked right and stopped pumping in order to twist the bleed screw a bit tighter (a lot tighter as it turned out – this would bite us later). I looked under-neath the truck and saw what was happening and told him to just keep pumping and the wheel finally lifted clear of the ground so that I could remove the last lug nut and remove the wheel. This delay meant that we were about the last of the four pairs of com-petitors in our group to start down the bank with our tire. The slope down to the beach where the canoes were waiting was about a hundred feet long and at a thirty-degree angle so it was

fairly steep. Chris and I were rolling the tire down the bank run-ning beside it and keeping our hands on the top of the tire to slow it down when it got away from us and started rolling di-rectly for the water. Chris took off to try and head it off before it wound up forty feet out into the pond as I trotted behind. He made a great diving tackle to deflect the wheel away from the water that wound up planting him face first in a mud bank at the waters edge. The tire rolled past him and out into the pond but his effort kept the wheel from winding up way out in the middle of the pond. I splashed past Chris into knee deep water as he was extracting himself from the mud bank, hoisted the tire out of the pond and heaved it into the nearest canoe. We ran up to the circle on the beach to get the equipment and I grabbed two life jackets as Chris picked up the paddles and headed for the canoe. I tossed Chris his life jacket and began struggling to put mine on as we reached the waters edge – the rules stated that all three buckles had to be securely fastened or you would be assessed a time penalty. Whoever had worn that particular life jacket last was considerably smaller than I am – I had to wrestle the snaps into place and could barely breathe with the life jacket on. By the time I got that thing on Chris was waiting in the nose of the canoe for me to push off so I hopped in and pushed away from the beach. He started paddling as I looked in the floor of the boat for my paddle. “Chris – where’s my paddle?” I shouted. He looked back at me and then focused over my shoulder at some distant object “Back there” he said. I looked over my shoulder to see my paddle lying on the beach about thirty feet back. I shouted for Chris to give me his paddle and just started head-ing for the far end of the pond and the buoy. Chris tried to lean over the side and help by paddling with his hands but he was upsetting the delicate balance of the canoe so I told him to sit still and just dug in to get the canoe moving around the buoy. We really didn’t lose too much time as a result of our mistake as I used to spend a lot of time paddling canoes around – of course I’m not in the kind of shape I used to be in either. On the last leg back down the pond after we rounded the buoy I started to get pretty winded. As we started to approach the beach Chris tried to stand up in the nose of the canoe to get ready to jump out and I had to yell at him to sit down as I didn’t want to have to fish him out of the water – especially since he told me he can’t swim (brave move for him to volunteer to get out on the water in these circumstances) and I had promised him I’d drag him out if we fell in. As we ran the nose of the canoe up on shore, Chris jumped out and grabbed a thwart to drag the boat farther up the beach. As he picked up on the nose of the canoe it tipped over and dumped me into the water. (Thanks a bunch bud – paybacks are hell) Now thoroughly soaked in wet, muddy clothes we had to wrestle the wheel and tire which probably weighed nearly as much as Chris back up this steep slope to the waiting Range Rover. We were both rolling the tire up the hill as hard as we could – nei-ther of us could breathe any harder (although remember Chris got to sit back and enjoy a leisurely boat ride by cleverly leaving

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a paddle on the beach) and things were looking a little better as we had made up some of the lost time on the water. As we topped the hill we were both staggering from the exertion of getting that tire back up to the Rover and I had to let Chris heave the tire back on to the lugs as I couldn’t see straight enough to line them up. We started spinning on the lug nuts and after we got a couple on Chris rolled out of the way to go back and lower the jack once I got them snugged up. I yelled for him to lower the jack and he said, “It’s stuck!” – with our wet, muddy hands we couldn’t free the bleed screw on the jack and lower the car to the ground. I thought about kicking the car out of gear and pushing it off the jack but a look down the slope to the waiting waters of the pond convinced me that this was a bad idea (besides there was that Un-safe Jacking Practices penalty to worry about). I ran around to the back of the car and opened the toolbox to get a pair of channel locks out and used them to drop the Rover to the ground. As we yanked the jack out from under the Rover and called time Chris and I looked at each other; one covered in mud and the other dripping wet, and said, “Well we probably could have done that a little better”. – At least we didn’t capsize the canoe as some one in the next group did (twice) although Chris did give that a try until I told him to sit still. I sure hope someone got this on video (I think). After a quick change of clothes (I always bring extras to these events in case I fall in a lake or something – this just happens to be the first time I’ve ever needed them) we were ready for the next task – backing a trailer into a “garage”. For this task the dia-bolical planners of the Aluminum Man Triathlon have set up a narrow “alley” of cones on a side slope of a hill with another in-tersecting set of cones forming a “garage” off the right side of the alley. The task is to drive your rover down the alley until your front bumper just touches the end cone, then back the trailer into the garage until it touches the back cone and drive frontward out the way you came in without touching any of the other cones. You must declare “shunts” or changes in direction before you stop and time penalties are assessed for touching the cones on either the sides of the garage or the alley.

The trailer was probably the world’s shortest twin axle trailer – only about 6 feet long with a very short tongue and it looked like it would jackknife faster than you can say “oops!” To further

complicate matters – there was a large 4-foot diameter ball on the flat trailer with only a 2” lip to hold it on. If the ball falls off the trailer the driver has to stop until the passenger gets it back on the trailer and gets back in the truck. The fact that we were doing this on a side slope hill and that you can’t get your arms around the ball to pick it up was not lost on Chris and I – we decided to “tie that kangaroo down, sport” once they started the clock. I fished out some extra long tie downs and Chris was able to get the ball strapped down and be back in the truck within twenty seconds of the start of our run. The little trailer proved to be as evil to try to back up as it looked. We managed to get out with an elapsed time of just less than two minutes

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and one penalty cone that I clipped with the trailer on the way out of the garage. Team Solaros beat the second place team by almost a minute in this event but I’m not sure how much of a penalty the cone cost us in the scoring. It was amusing to watch some of the other teams struggle with this task – but the 101 Forward Control of the Aspins was amazing. Very nicely done! The final driving task was the RTV or Road Taxed Vehicle course set up down on the island. The RTV course consisted of six sections of trails with minor obstacles such as trees, ditches, banks and roots and a set of cane pole gates on each section. The gates are numbered starting with Gate 12 and they descend down to Gate 1 just as you exit the section. Once you enter the section you are not allowed to stop or back up unless you declare a “shunt” (100” wheelbase and up vehicles). Only one shunt is al-lowed per section and the gates are set up to be just wider than a Range Rover (with the mirrors folded in!). The idea is to start in to the section and drive all of the way through it without stop-ping, backing up or touching a cane. The sections themselves are not particularly difficult but the canes are placed in ways that make it very difficult to avoid hitting them. If you hit any of the canes you receive the score of the highest number cane that you touch in that section. That way if you “clean” a section and drive through without hitting any canes you receive 0 points – if you clip gate 10 (the second gate in) you get 10 points. If you also hit gate 2 after hitting gate 10 you still only receive 10 points. Low-est cumulative score of the six sections wins in each class. The

canes can be placed so that your roof will lean over and hit a cane as a wheel on the opposite side of the Rover rides up over a log or mound of dirt – the placement of the gates can be dia-bolical. You need a good spotter in the passenger seat to give you guidance as to how much clearance you have between the right side of your Rover and the canes on that side. And yes, Series 1 Land Rovers are very good at this event because they are so much narrower and shorter – that’s why there are sepa-rate classes.

We started out this event with a lot of confidence – I did this last year and it was a lot of fun so I knew what to expect. You were allowed to walk the course before you drove it and Chris and I would look over each section and determine in advance where we might use our one shunt in each section if necessary. The gates were set up to be incredibly narrow in spots and be-ing off your line by much more than an inch was bound to bring you into contact with a gate. In Section 1 a small mistake caused me to hit Gate 10 with the Rover and that sort of set the tone for the day. In Section 2 we scored a 6, then another 10 in Section 3, which put us seriously behind in the competition. We redeemed ourselves somewhat in Section 4 by scoring a 1 (I don’t know how I managed to clip the exit gate with the back corner of the truck!) and scored a 4 in Section 5. The final sec-tion looked tight but relatively easy and we had hopes of get-ting out of the RTV with a respectable but not outstanding re-sult. Just beyond Gate 11 at the start of the section there was a bush that stuck out into the course. As Chris was trying to spot for me to line up our approach to Gate 10 the brush whapped him in the face and he couldn’t see. I was trying to swing a lit-tle wide around the bush and just barely clipped the Gate 10 cane on my side of the truck with the front corner of the ARB bumper so we wound up with a score of 10 on the final Section 6. (Since there was no one waiting in line we re-ran that section for fun immediately afterward and cleaned it easily – damn!) The final portion of the Aluminum Man is a Parts Identification test where eight pieces of various Land Rovers are set out on a table for you to identify with a written description. Robert Davis had searched his parts stores for samples for us to pon-

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der -some of these pieces were so obscure even the organizer Sandy Grice didn’t know what they were. There was one part in particular that was driving me nuts – I knew that I had had one in my hand not long ago – and I couldn’t remember where it went. Sandy was real helpful in telling us that we were going to feel “really stupid” when we found out what it was. I made some sort of wild guess and sent David Porter over to look at it after I had turned in my scorecard. Even David couldn’t iden-tify this piece (part #1) and later that evening when I asked Sandy what it was he told us it was the water pump pulley hub for a Series truck. They are usually already mounted when you get the pump and it takes a press to disassemble them from the water pump. David said that was just “evil” when I told him what it was. There were several other parts that were equally obscure and Sandy said that no one identified more than two or three (out of eight) correctly. The end result of the Aluminum Man Triathlon was that the Solaros Team of Jack Walter and Chris Brown wound up in Third place and we also took third place in the Range Rover class in the RTV trial (You could run the RTV separately). We won Gift Certificates for $100 from DAP and for $25 from Rovers North for our participation in the event. Chris and I plan to compete again next year (after a little training session

on the proper way to use a Range Rover jack) and we hope to make fewer mistakes. We challenge the rest of the Solaros crew to take the Aluminum Man challenge. It was a lot of fun even if my teammate managed to dump me in the lake!

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Hard Luck on the way to the MAR by Ron Ward Thursday, October 4, 2001 12:00PM Departed Columbus, GA with fully loaded and combat ready 1997 Discovery SE. Destination: Cumming, GA to join convoy with brother Rick Ward 2:45PM Arrive Rick's house in Cumming after quick ice and bat-tery stop at Super Wal-Mart. Rick has loaded and secured 1968 IIA 88" soft top to back of U-haul trailer and the trailer to his Ford F150 truck. 3:30PM Depart Cumming and head up I-85 by way of GA20. 6:30PM Convoy reaches Gaffney, SC (home of the giant peach) for fuel and food stop. 10:30PM Convoy reaches Danville, VA (just inside state line) and stops at welcome station for restroom break. NO FUEL. Friday, October 5, 2001 12:00AM Convoy reaches Glenn A. Trent Truck Plaza, Highway 29, scenic Rustburg, VA about 15 miles south of Lynchburg, VA. Fuel up and check map. I take 8 gallons premium (91 oc-tane) and Rick pumps 23 gallons into his dangerously empty F150. 12:05AM Discovery engine coughs and dies 10 feet from pump and truck plaza. I radio Rick of the bad news. Total failure, no start. 12:06AM F150 engine coughs and dies 100 yards from truck plaza pump and out on 29. Rick responds to my radio signal, "mine too". F150 coasts to side of the highway, still pulling IIa 88". 12:08AM Discovery rolled back in neutral to rear of truck plaza

gravel parking area under street lights. Wait on Rick to walk back down highway. 12:10AM We walk in to the truck plaza and tell the lady be-hind the counter that we "think" there may be a problem with the gas we just bought. Two engine failures following pur-chase of the same gas from the same underground tank. She looks at us quizzingly and asks, "what do you want to do?" Staggering around, we asked her to phone the owner and inform them of the problem. She does and hands me the phone. I speak to Mrs. Trent, lovely young wife of Glenn A. who tells me there's nothing she can do tonight ("it's after mid-night for Pete's sake!") and that she can have someone from the oil company test the fuel tomorrow. I ask her to rethink that and she says she'll call one of her mechanics to come out and look at the situation. She offers to give us a ride home, if we live locally. She mumbles something about having the fuel tank tested and expressed her opinion that it couldn't possibly be the gas we bought. What? 12:15AM After threatening to call a cop or two (huh?) the cashier calls the owner's wife back. I hand the phone to Rick, the diplomat who gets the owner to agree to contact a tow truck to come look at our trucks. 12:30AM Back outside I call AAA (no one ever showed up from AAA) and then Land Rover Roadside Assistance. Now my truck is a 1997 SE with 66k miles. Full Land Rover As-sured No Deductible warranty that transferred from the original owner. I bought it in June, 2001 and have had a fair amount of warranty work done since then. The nice lady on the phone took my information, confirmed that I was the owner and con-firmed the warranty information. She told me to sit tight and someone would be along shortly. 12:45AM Baxter drives up in a huge Ford F350 diesel wrecker. He was sent by Land Rover to come help. Turns out he works for the guy who owns the truck stop that sold us the bad gas in the first place. He pours a sample of gas into a clear glass and confirms the gas is about 60/40% water to gaso-line. Stuff looked like green Gatorade. 1:30AM 60% of the gas in the Discovery is drained out onto the pavement (EPA?) and half of what's left gets siphoned out with a hose, onto the pavement. Rick and I notice a similar oily stain on the pavement not far from where my Disco sits and we both wonder if this had happened to someone else ear-lier that day. Baxter, meanwhile, starts fiddling with getting the fuel filler hose back on the Disco and releasing the water from the fuel rail. 2:00AM Disco is pushed back up to the fuel pumps (a differ-ent pump with low octane fuel) and Baxter deposits 8 gallons into the tank. With the help of carburetor cleaner and starter spray the engine cranks, but will not run long. 3:00AM We call "time of death" and declare the fuel pump deceased.

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3:15AM Rick and I along with Baxter and three other wrecker drivers from the Glenn A. Trent truck plaza retire to the diner in-side and formulate a plan. The owners have agreed to accept re-sponsibility and suggested they trailer Rick's Ford to Lynchburg and my Disco to Richmond. They originally said they had a me-chanic who could rebuild my fuel pump. Yah, right. So we de-cide to unfasten the trailer and IIa from the Ford and put the Ford on a flatbed tow truck ("roll back") bound for Lynchburg Ford. We get it aboard, wave goodbye and watch it vanish into the night. We secure the IIa and the trailer in front of the diner and wait on the owner, Glenn A. Trent himself, to arrive in his own personal "roll back" to make the trip to Land Rover Rich-mond, some 2 hours away. 4:30AM At long last the coffee and cigarettes have kicked in and we've gotten the Disco winched up on the "roll back" wrecker. A quick check of the tie-downs on the wrecker and Rick and I pile in the cab and head off to Richmond. Now, Mr. Glenn A. Trent is well known in Lynchburg. He owns the truck plaza, complete with crappy, watery gas, and some 30-odd wreckers and haulers. He also owns a couple service stations and a full service garage. Mr. Trent started in the business when he was 20 years old and just recently celebrated his 80th birth-day. 5:30AM Careening down the highway that runs through Appo-mattox and Cumberland Court House, we try and keep Glenn awake by talking about Osama bin Laden, the Civil War, fall foli-age, Dodge Ram Super Duty Roll Back car haulers with Cum-mins diesel engines, Land Rovers, and his family. We learned that Mr. Trent has been married to his second wife for 11 years, and she just celebrated her 42nd birthday. He has a 2 year old son (he's 80, remember) at home too. Mr. Trent has three daugh-ters, ranging in age from 65 to 58, 7 grand children and 2 great-grandchildren. 6:30AM We stop at a nice Shell station just outside Richmond, VA for coffee and a break. I caught Glenn scarfing a jelly doughnut while standing in line to pay for his drink and I though to myself "great, he's sleep deprived AND diabetic." I've seen what low blood sugar can do and it ain't pretty. When we are ready to get back into the cab I ask Rick if he'd mind sitting in the middle for the rest of the trip and he said "No, I will not ride in the middle." Can't blame me for trying. 7:15AM We arrive at Land Rover Richmond. Mandy, the cus-tomer service gal is opening up for the morning and sees us mill-ing around in the parking lot. Glenn gets her to open the door 15 minutes early and he starts in on her about repairing my truck. He tells her about his watered down gasoline and that we must get where we are going as soon as possible. She looks over at Rick and me and directs us to her waiting area and tells us she is going to call her boyfriend Drew to come in on his day off to work on my truck. Now Drew, as many of you may know, works at LR Richmond as a master technician as well as with John

Bradley Smith at RoverTym Engineering. Drew has the day off so he can go to the Middy. As it turns out, the traffic in the service area is light and the guys are able to get to work on it first thing. They drain the tank, wipe out the crud, replace the fuel pump assembly and test everything. Total bill comes to $485, which is promptly delivered to Mr. Glenn A. Trent for payment. Mandy, meanwhile, has loaded Rick and me up with a bunch of LR Richmond t-shirts, hats and decals for our trou-ble. That is one good dealership. 11:30AM Under my own power, Rick and I head back the Lynchburg to retrieve his Ford truck. We follow Mr. Trent tak-ing the same route as earlier in the day. More than once the octogenarian runs off the side of the road in his foggy sleepi-ness. 1:30PM Lynchburg, Virginia at Trent's garage. The Ford is up on a rack while 4 "mechanics" remove the gas tank and prepare it for a new pump motor. The truck had been sent on a roll back the night before to Lynchburg's only Ford dealer. That dealer did not have the part needed and was backed up in their service area anyway. Several calls to area dealers yielded no parts. Back in Lynchburg, the local NAPA parts outfit had the motor and one was dispatched to the garage where the Ford now sits. Frustrating part is that the motor did not get to the garage until just moments before we pull in, at 1:30PM in the afternoon on Friday. 2:30PM Pump is installed and the tank is refitted to the Ford and the engine cranks. Hooray! Filled up with gas and still running, Rick and I say our goodbye's ("See you in Hell, ya'bastard!") to the Trent family and make our way the 20 miles to Rustburg to pick up the IIa. 3:30PM Enter Wal-Mart parking lot on US29 in Rustburg for ground beef, eggs, bacon, and ice. We also stop to assess the brakes on Rick's truck as they seem spongy. We get the gro-ceries and determine the brakes are fine and that our brains have been without sleep for 33 hours now.

The morning after the Longest Day—don’t they look relaxed?

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5:15PM Hello Middy! Triumphantly we make our entrance down the long dusty trail (hell of a lot dustier with Rick's low hanging trailer acting as a grader). We put the truck and the trailer to the side, check in at Rally Control and choose a camp-site. I have never been so happy to see my camping gear in all my life. We chose a nice site and set up. 29 hours after I left my house in Columbus, GA, we were set-ting up camp. Running on close to 36 hours without any sleep makes putting a camp site a pleasure. Just happy to be there in one piece, we settled in and cooked some hamburgers and en-joyed a beverage. We later took a walk looking for familiar faces and ran into Chris Schramm and his posse from At-lanta. They'd saved a camp site for us, but they didn't see us when we rolled in. We decided to go on a night ride and took Moshe's D90 LE and Rick's IIa and had a great time despite no sleep and frayed nerves. Chris and Todd, Greg Davis and sev-eral others joined us. We took the log bridge trail and got stuck, winched, cussed, laughed, and finally got back to camp sometime around midnight. Roughly 42 hours without sleep and we turned in, finally. Saturday was great. The trails were challenging and fun and the people were very friendly. Seeing all those Series trucks really made me miss my old IIa. Walking around such a big group of Land Rovers really gives you a lot of ideas for modifi-cation and improvisation. The new Freelander was on display and looked like it even got out in the mud some. I met a lot of the folks I have gotten to know via the internet for the first time (Thanks for the Hella light mounts, Alex!) too. The food at the Middy was excellent as well. Lunch and dinner were catered affairs and were both first rate. The entertainment Saturday night was, er, unique and gave the SOLAROS group an idea for next years SAE rally (Not!). The raffle and auction were fun as usual. David Porter's group made off with a truck-load of goodies. Another night ride on Saturday, this time in the climate con-trolled environment of the Discovery with no winching neces-sary. A few beers around the campsite and I was back in the sack by mid-night. We packed up Sunday morning after the brunch (again, excellent food) and left just as the slow race got underway. We left at 11:30AM on Sunday and I was at my house by 11:30PM that night. It was fun, I will do it again, and I will limit myself to name-brand gasoline from here on out. Plus Rick got a t-shirt for tell-ing the story (Size L– which he swapped for a 97 MAR T-shirt at Rally control later).

More pictures from the SAE event in Menlo:

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RANGE ROVER - DEFENDER DISCOVERY SERIES I & II

NORTH AMERICA’S MOST TRUSTED SOURCE FOR

GENTLY PRE-OWNED LAND ROVERS

10390 ALPHARETTA STREET - SUITE 210 ROSWELL, GA 30075

(770) 645-8886

M-F 9-6 / SAT 9-5 / Closed Sundays

Visit us on the Web

http://www.bvlr.com

Now featuring a full 5-bay service department With 2 factory trained mechanics

Testbook with full GEMS and Bosch diagnostics

ENGLISH - SWEDISH SPARES 345 Branch Drive Alpharetta, GA 30004

Largest collection of recycled Saab, Volvo, Jaguar and Land Rover Parts in the Southeast. Just off Mcfarland Road 1 mile west of GA 400. Toll Free 1-800-241-1916 Local 770-475-2662 Fax 770-475-2663

Land Rovers and Parts For Sale

Series III 109 two door for sale—EX-MOD, 4-cyl. petrol with dual fuel tanks, oil cooler, all synchro 4-speed, Salis-bury rear axle, two tops (full canvas and pickup), custom roll cage, 9.00 x16 tires, new brakes, exhaust, and battery, and much more! It even has the gun mounts (included but not currently on the truck); color is bluish gray. Odometer reads 34,000 KM (about 22,000 miles) $9600 or best offer—Norman Barden 706-546-8471 NBD90@aol.com

Bear Valley Land Rovers adds Service Department The crew over at Bear Valley Land Rovers have added a 5-bay service department to take care of all late model Land Rover products for both their customers and other Land Rover owners who want an alternative source for factory trained service technicians. The have the latest test book for doing full diagnostics on all GEMS and Bosch equipped vehicles and are prepared to do all the preventative mainte-nance tasks called out in your manual as well as heavy me-chanical repairs. Steve McQueen has been a factory trained Land Rover ser-vice technician since 1987 and can tell some great tales of working with Land Rover expeditions in Belize, Costa Rica and various other remote parts of the world. He is incredi-bly knowledgeable about the little things that can go bump in the night with these vehicles and really cares about get-ting it right. The other mechanic, Heinz has extensive knowledge of these vehicles as well and can recite a list of reasons for poor idle characteristics a yard long at a moments notice. With these two teamed up on a Land Rover there’s not much that can escape them. They also perform an compre-hensive check of each vehicle as it comes in to Bear Valley to make sure it’s right before it gets put on the lot. In order to keep these two busy Bear Valley has opened up their service department to anyone who needs reliable, competent service technicians. Call Ken at 770-645-8886 to schedule your service appointment.

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THE GREENLANER

Southern Land Rover Society 1325 North Point Way Roswell, Ga 30075-4135

Inside This Issue: Southern Appalachian Expedition Report Mid-Atlantic Rally Report Aluminum Man Triathlon How to win a T-shirt the Hard Way Bear Valley adds Service Department

MEMBERSHIP RATE SCHEDULE Annual membership $40/year Membership includes a subscription to The Greenlaner and a SOLAROS club decal for your Land Rover and membership in the Southern FWD Association. Additional decals are available for $3 each or 2/$5 Advertising rates for the Greenlaner: Business Card $45/year 1/4 Page $95/year 1/2 Page $200/year Full Page $395/year Libby Gallagher is the Membership Chairman. Please send all of your renewals and new membership enquiries to: 1758 Tappahannock Trail, Marietta, GA 30062 e-mail: solaros4fun@mindspring.com

Solaros can be found on the net at: http//www.solaros.com

Please send all stories, ads, pictures and other submissions for the Greenlaner to Jack Walter at the following address: solaros1@att.net

Strange sights at the SAE event